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Tech kickers balance free time, pressure of job

When Texas Tech football fans think of Tony Rogers, the first thing they remember might be the last-minute field goal he made to beat Texas A&M in 1997. That act by itself secured him a favorable place in Red Raiders lore.

But Rogers’ job description — kicker — meant he didn’t spend every minute of of his career diligently preparing for that moment.

“The guys videoing practice would pan between plays, and they caught us in the coach’s office kicked up with our feet on the table, reading the paper,” Rogers, a McKinney resident, said this week. “That was during two-a-days. Coach (Rhudy) Maskew asked us what we did during the morning practice. We had said we did some running and did some onside kicks. He said, ‘Don’t lie to me. What did you really do?’”

The kickers acknowledged reading when they were supposed to be working.

Other times, Rogers confesses he could have been busted for wandering over to the batting cages or the tennis courts at the Athletic Training Center or strolling up the steps of Jones AT&T Stadium to take in the view from the president’s box.

The president’s box?

“I remember many a times we had popcorn and drank Dr Pepper,” said Rogers, who made 25 field goals in his career. “A lot of times it was stale popcorn, probably left over from previous weeks.”

The point is, kickers are kings of killing time. Have to be. While teammates endure 21/2 hours a day of grueling drills, kickers generally need less time to get their work in — much of it done alone or in the company of other kickers. In the case of Tech kickers, if the team is on the practice fields, they might be in the stadium or vice versa.

“If it was a 21/2-hour practice,” Rogers said, “we were probably on our own for two hours.”

Or, as former Tech kicker Lin Elliott put it, “There’s no doubt you could disappear for a while.”

And trying to kick, say, 200 times a day would be counterproductive. Elliott, who went on to kick for the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs, compared the job to a baseball pitcher preparing for a start. Game day was toughest: He had to keep his leg warm for four or five hours, meaning a lot of leg swings. Then it was a couple of days working out the soreness and a couple of days kicking enough to stay sharp without wearing out the leg.

“Instead of kicking 20 kicks, I’d rather randomly jog from the sidelines out on the field and do one kick at a time, 20 times over an hour period, kind of like you would in the game, and try to put pressure on that kick,” Elliott said, “instead of sit in the same spot, kick 15 in a row and call it a day.”

Tech kicker Matt Williams said 50 to 60 kicks spread over Tuesday and Wednesday is typical for him with 15 to 20 kicks, tops, on Thursday.

On Saturday, all the preparation came together for Williams, whose 40- and 36-yard field goals were vital to a 27-24 victory at Colorado. Both came in the fourth quarter, the last a game-winner with 2:08 left.

Tech quarterback Taylor Potts said coaches prepared Williams for that moment during August practices, many of which ended with the kickers having to try a field goal in front of the whole team. Make it, and everyone went in happy. Miss it, and everyone ran.

And hated on the kicker.

“You really don’t want to make these big guys run after they’ve been doing a hundred plays in one day,” Williams said, “so that’s a lot of pressure.”

Rogers agreed, saying he always felt more tense in end-of-practice situations than in games.

Williams thought for a moment about the worst flak he’s ever gotten from teammates over a missed kick.

He’s never been locked in his locker. Never been thrown in the cold tub.

“They just yell and scream at me,” Williams said with a grin. “Well, they wrote ‘No Kickers’ on the ping-pong paddles, so we’d stop playing ping-pong so much. They wanted us to go practice some more.”

Elliott wishes a “No Kickers” message on the ping-pong paddles was the worst fallout he ever faced. Instead, he became a pariah among Kansas City sports fans after missing three field goals in a 10-7 playoff loss to the Indianapolis Colts. That spoiled a 13-3 season and the Chiefs’ homefield advantage in the AFC playoffs.

“You miss a kick in that type of situation, that’s a little bit different animal,” Elliott said. “You might have just cost everyone in the organization a $10,000 or $15,000 bonus check.”

After his famous flop in the playoff game, Elliott heard about sarcastic comments teammate Derrick Thomas made about him on a radio show and then-Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer made about him before the next season.

That was 15 years ago.

And not long ago, Elliott’s infamy in KC even trickled down to his 10-year-old daughter.

“She Googled her dad, and instead of finding out how great he was, one of the first stories that popped up was a story from Kansas City in a negative light,” said Elliott, who now works for Texas Farm Bureau in Waco.

Rogers, Elliott and Williams each made a late field goal once to win a game in their Tech careers.

“That’s part of being a kicker,” Elliott said. “You’re not noticed until you’re noticed, and a lot of times you’re noticed if you get a chance like Matt did. That’s a great feeling. You work all your life for a shot to win a game, and he absolutely did that.”